Zoya Azhar ‘20
Assistant Opinions Editor
Halloween is an amazing holiday at Smith: gouged out pumpkins appear on every house porch, as house leaders take the opportunity to fulfill their quotas for house events in the form of pumpkin carving sessions.
Pumpkin stickers and emojis get slapped onto fliers, posters and emails, because ‘tis the season. Unperturbed professors continue to assign copious amounts of work. Everyone walks around happy and primed to call out cultural appropriation because an informed Smithie is a good Smithie.
The blissful conception that candy helps any cause becomes rampant. Every single student organization tabling in the Campus Center will offer you bowls of random CVS candies, at least as much as they could fit into their budget.
Chuckett puts up its infamous witch cutout, and now you must face her every time you go for a second helping of that Purple Cow ice cream.
Personally, my favorite part about Halloween at Smith is that a third of the year’s parties happen in these two days. If you happen to think we should space out our scarce supply of parties, you’re out of luck. If you think we should have more parties on campus to begin with, you’re also out of luck.
Let’s set the scene for Immorality. You are vehemently opposed to attending Smith parties because the music is terrible but you still show up after finishing half of your anthropology paper, complete with your socks and Birkenstocks on, because you take what you get.
You walk up to Talbot, see a line of ten people dressed in variations of black rompers and decide nothing is worth waiting for. You are in bed and snoozing by midnight. Over brunch the next morning you will tell your tired friends about how wholesome your Friday night was.
Let’s set the scene for Fetish. You decide as long as you wear your darkest lipstick shade, you are ready for the party. Your friend joins you but spends an hour complaining about how you two should have gone to the Hampshire Woods instead.
Both of you spot two people dancing enthusiastically to the voice-over at the end of “Thriller” by Michael Jackson and feel pathetic for deciding to spend your Saturday night this way. You stay until 1 a.m. anyway, hoping against all odds that the music will improve.
And of course there is the whole host of people who decide their creed is getting off-campus to find their fun. The PVTA bus-riders have made their peace with asking college students dressed as Shrek and other miscellaneous beings, to present ID.
I will say the costume ideas were stellar this year. One Smithie chose to dress up as John M. Greene Hall, in the hopes of inspiring the infamous author of the Smith houses fanfiction to include this hall’s story in the narrative.
Another student chose to dress up as the physical manifestation of Nietzsche’s nihilistic ideas and parade back and forth through the Grecourt Gates, supposedly in rejection of the myths associated with them.
As for me, I look forward to Halloween at Smith every year because it is the only time my infatuation with the Session’s ghost is socially acceptable.
